This was yet another week in which corruption dominated our
headlines.
Uganda National Road Authority (UNRA)’s Allen Kagina took a slasher
to the organisation’s hierarchy, sacking some, encouraging others not to seek
contract renewal and causing soul searching in the authority, which had become
the byword for the worst excesses of corruption in this country’s history.
UNRA’s woes came to a head last year, with the explosive
revelations about the Mukono-Katosi road project, a plot gone wrong which
nevertheless was crafted with such ingenuity, audacity and gluttony, it left
the general public gasping for air.
So brilliant was the plan that getting to the bottom of the scam was not unlike chasing ghosts in panama hats and, while UNRA Officials may have been complicit, you get the feeling the real masterminds still walk among us....
Then there was the back-and-forth between Justice John
Keitirima and Kampala lawyer Bob Kasango about the little matter of sh15.4b,
that may or may not have been awarded irregularly or illegally, in a past court
case and how the spoils of these monies should have been divvied up.
Apart from the details of this or that case the true cost of
corruption is really not appreciated.
Governments which work in the service of their citizens work
to generate economic activity, this activity is taxed and it’s with this money
that government provides public goods – security and infrastructure and social
services – education and health.
Ideally these government interventions are meant to create
an enabling environment for more and more economic activity to be generated,
but also to give a leg up to the least of our brothers so they can climb up the
ladder of society to improve their general wellbeing.
However this neat progression can come unstuck if, the
government of the day is woefully incompetent or is riddled with corruption.
It is obvious. Corruption concentrates resources in a few
hands to the detriment of the majority.
The “gentleman” who helps himself to a few billions from the
public coffers to buy his wife a four wheel drive vehicle, holiday in the
Bahamas and live in the lap of luxury, denies thousands of patients lifesaving
medicine, lowers farm gate prices as transporters traumatised by bad roads
drive a hard bargain and means the quality of our basic education is
compromised for lack of blackboards, benches or even a roof over the classroom.
"The outcome of this one gentleman’s avarice has a ripple effect through society and down history more than he could have appreciated when his grubby fingers signed off the money...
But beyond the physical consequences there is the moral
degradation of the general society.
It shows itself first in the individuals who no longer even
deny they have taken the money.
Their moral fibre is so tattered that we have heard them, in
their defence argue, that there are bigger thieves and why are we going after
them, that the money landed in the account by some divine providence or that
they deserve it because of the sacrifice they have made to country.
And then their immediate families and society around them.
We celebrate when our relatives “eat big” -- appointed to a higher
position. We gleefully jump into his brand new car, invite ourselves to his new
mansion or are let out a large cheer in the bar when he covers our bills. Even
if we have this niggling feeling in the back of our mind that the mathematics
does not add up.
The long and short of it is that there is no social censure
of corrupt behaviour in our country. Without social censure there really is no
hope.
"Our feelings about corruption need to fall to the level of the disgust we feel when a 44 year old father defiles his five month daughter or the dismay we feel when a nine year old is crashed to death in boda boda accident or the shame we feel when grown women feel it necessary to strip in protest over the injustice that allows their land to be stolen from under their noses, that is when there will be hope...
